It has been a month for the record books in terms of wet weather. According to the National Weather Service, the past few weeks of storm after storm is adding up. Precipitation is over 300% of normal for January in most of California.Earlier in the month, federal officials released numbers that showed more than 40 percent of California had emerged from a five-year drought. This was before even more wet weather rolled through.
As California mops up after the recent rainstorms, the state faces a decision. Is it time for state leaders to lift the emergency policies meant to encourage water conservation during the multi-year drought? That’s our Question of the Week for readers. If you haven’t had time to keep track of the rainfall statistics while trying to keep the roof on, here are the basics: Several storms this winter have brought various areas of California two to four times the average rainfall for this time of year.
California Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for 50 California counties that have been drenched by storms, including ongoing Winter Storm Leo, which have caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. In this latest round of storms to pound the state, at least four people died, three were missing and others were rescued from raging floodwaters. Anguished relatives gathered along a creek in Alameda County southeast of San Francisco as searchers looked for an 18-year-old woman whose car plunged into the rushing waterway after a collision late Saturday.
The unusually wet winter now hitting San Diego County and California could bring a sight that’s been witnessed only twice in the past 13 years – water cascading over the Lake Hodges dam. “If the weather pattern we have continues through February, in all likelihood Lake Hodges will fill and spill this spring,” said Mike Bardin, general manager of the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which supplies water to Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach and Fairbanks Ranch.
California’s vital Sierra Nevada snowpack measured 197 percent of average on Tuesday in the aftermath of three weeks of storms — the highest level in more than a decade. Automated measuring stations showed 161 percent in the northern section, 195 percent in the central area and 240 percent in the south. Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources, said it’s too early to call the California drought over, but said the recent storms will do “quite a bit toward alleviating the drought impacts” in the hardest hit parts of the state
One week and three storms later, you would think the drought would be over. “At this point, it’s not enough,” hydrologist Jayme Labor with the National Weather Service Oxnard said. Labor says while the past week’s storms are short-term relief, we would need a lot more rain to say goodbye to the drought. “I think we need to have another year like this following it to see the drought completely go away in Southern California,” said Labor.
The rushing water throughout Santa Barbara County in the last week is a positive sign, but the drought is not over. Water Resources Manager Joshua Haggmark says the Santa Barbara supply will still need multiple sources and a specific management plant to get out of the crisis the area has dealt with for over five years. Even with Gibraltar Dam filled and spilling, the water quality is poor due to fire zone runoff and other problems. The in flow to Cachuma Lake also does not go directly to Santa Barbara but a long list of customers and environmental obligations. The last rain water from Cachuma that flowed to the city went through the delivery line in December.
San Luis Reservoir west of Los Banos is on its way to filling for the first time since 2011 as rain and snow bring the state additional relief from a punishing drought. Statewide, a series of storms over the past two weeks have allowed water managers to fill major reservoirs to above-normal levels for this time of year. Meanwhile, a healthy snowpack is giving southern San Joaquin Valley farmers hope that irrigation water this summer will be plentiful because the southern Sierra Nevada snowpack is now estimated at 124 percent of the average for April 1 – and winter isn’t over yet.
A set of atmospheric rivers that brought heavy rains and floods to California also dumped a record amount of snow on Mammoth Mountain in January — 20½ feet, the most in the resort town’s history, local tourist officials announced. “What a time it is to be at Mammoth,” the announcement said on MammothMountain.com, which represents area resorts. “Conditions are all-time, get out there and have the ‘best pow day of your life.’ ”
Researchers predict that global warming generally will make summers hotter and winters milder from Southern California to the northeastern United States to parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The impact will vary depending on different regions of the planet, according to a report published Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. While the U.S., Canada and northern Europe are expected to see modest increases in mild to hot days, people living in the tropics should brace for significantly more heat, said authors of the study, which appears in the journal Climatic Change.
